Missouri Babysitter Sentenced to Life for Killing 4-Year-Old, Joined Search for His Body
Quatavia Givens, 33, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder after beating and smothering Darnell Gray in 2018, then spending six days searching alongside volunteers.
Missouri Babysitter Joins Six-Day Search for Boy She Killed, Then Pleads Guilty to Murder
A Missouri woman has been sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to killing a 4-year-old boy in her care and then spending nearly a week helping volunteers search for him — all while knowing she had hidden his body in a wooded area, Law & Crime reports.
Quatavia Givens, 33, entered a guilty plea on Friday to second-degree murder, child abuse, and abandonment of a corpse. Cole County prosecutor Locke Thompson announced that Givens was sentenced to life plus 15 years, with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
The victim, Darnell Gray, was killed by Givens in October 2018 in Jefferson City. His father, Kijuanis Gray, had asked Givens to watch Darnell at his home before leaving. When Givens reported Darnell missing on the morning of Oct. 25, 2018, she told police the boy had disappeared from the residence before 7 a.m. — and that his backpack, coat, hat, gloves, two juice boxes, and some cookies were gone along with him.
"She stated the child was either abducted from the residence or ran away from the residence," according to an arrest affidavit obtained by Law & Crime.
Local news footage captured Givens canvassing neighborhoods alongside other volunteers and giving interviews about Darnell's purported disappearance. For Mary Williams Coley, a Missouri Missing Volunteers member who searched with Givens, the performance was only clear in hindsight.
"Looking back knowing that she was the one that hurt this baby — it just lets you know that this is a master manipulator," Coley told CBS affiliate KRCG in October 2019. "She could've been on the soap operas because she put on a show."
Fellow volunteer Kathy Mueller expressed the same suspicion about the fabricated detail of the missing snacks. "She had her story like planned out," Mueller told KRCG. "Who counts juice boxes? Who? Who checks their cabinet when their child or someone they're caring for is gone?"
Darnell's body was eventually discovered in a wooded area of Jefferson City. An autopsy determined he had died from blunt force trauma and was smothered. After investigators found his remains, Givens was interviewed and admitted, "I may have hit him wrong," along with acknowledging she hid the body, according to the arrest affidavit.
Kijuanis Gray, who had relocated from Chicago to Missouri in search of a better life, brought Darnell to live with him just six months before the boy was killed. Darnell's mother remained in Chicago.
"I trusted her to watch him," Gray told Chicago ABC affiliate WLS in November 2018. "I wasn't expecting her to do this to him." Gray described Darnell as his only child.
Thompson called the case one of the most painful the community has faced. "This case represents one of the most painful tragedies our community has faced and the loss of an innocent child whose life was taken far too soon," he said at a Friday press conference.
The prosecutor acknowledged that several factors caused significant delays in bringing the case to resolution. The autopsy report took close to a year to finalize — highly unusual, Thompson said — because examiners wanted to conduct brain studies to check for neurological damage before releasing the complete findings. A subsequent finding of incompetence to proceed, and delays in transferring Givens to the Department of Mental Health, further stalled proceedings.
Thompson said the guilty plea represents "an important step toward accountability for the defendant, closure for our community and justice for Darnell."
Source: Law & Crime